Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Landesinitiative Zukunftsenergien NRW

The NRW State Initiative on Future Energies strengthens North Rhine-Westphalia´s (NRW) role as the most important energy and power engineering region within the European Union and provides decisive impulses for the process of structural change, especially for the labour market. It is supported by the Ministry of Transport, Energy and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, Culture and Sport, the Ministry of Science and Research and the Ministry of Environment, Conservation, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of the state of Nordrhein Westfalen, Germany.

It is the objective of the NRW State Initiative on Future Energies to advance the efficient conversion and use of energy, to further develop and increasingly apply technologies for the use of inexhaustible sources of energy and to make use of the domestic coals in an environment-friendly way. It concentrates on stepping up the processes of innovation in NRW, paving the way for cooperations and strategic alliances and speeding up market introductions of trend-setting power technologies.

The target groups of the State Initiative are the manufacturers of power systems and equipment, utilities and suppliers, energy users, handicrafts, the building industry, architects and engineering offices, research and science as well as training institutes. The NRW State Initiative on Future Energies provides an information and cooperation platform for these target groups. For this purpose 18 working groups were set up so far within the different fields of foreign trade, housing and construction, biomass, energy services, energy concepts for specific industries, fuel cell, decentralised power systems, light-emitting diodes (LED), mine gas, photovoltaics, geothermics, cogeneration of power and heat, power plant technologies, solar heating, heat pumps, hydro-electric power, hydrogen power and wind energy. More than 3,000 experts from trade and industry, science, associations and the public sector already use this offer. The working groups discuss technical innovations and initiate concrete projects. Till now more than 600 projects were suggested. To date 200 of these projects have been granted promotion by the state government. 41 of these projects are so called keynote projects of the NRW State Initiative on Future Energies.

The following examples of trend-setting key projects are to be mentioned here: the solar factory in Gelsenkirchen, the Mont Cenis power park in Herne, the production of High Temperature Superconductors of Trithor in Rheinbach, the NRW-Study of geothermic potential, the training of solarteurs, the Energy Consulting mobile, the Heat Pump Clothes dryer and "50 solar energy housing estates for NRW".